benny_profane
Well-known member
Does anyone have any recommendations for a tube headphone amplifier DIY project? A DAC isn’t necessary.
DIY Tube Headphone Amplifer (Hi-fi)
- Thread starter benny_profane
- Start date
iamjackslackof
Well-known member
I built the Bottlehead Crack OTL and I love it. Fun to build, not too complex, plenty of mods you can do on it later if you get the itch, and it sounds great.
Edit: I also built the Project Starlight hybrid headphone amp, and while it sounded quite good, I could never get it to be very quiet whenever music wasn't playing, and I tried a ton of stuff to kill the noise. The Bottlehead is basically dead silent.
Edit: I also built the Project Starlight hybrid headphone amp, and while it sounded quite good, I could never get it to be very quiet whenever music wasn't playing, and I tried a ton of stuff to kill the noise. The Bottlehead is basically dead silent.
iamjackslackof
Well-known member
Also I think @vigilante398 had mentioned possibly designing a simple tube headphone amp, I'm not sure if there has been any progress on that.
vigilante398
Authorized Vendor
benny_profane
Well-known member
@vigilante398 is your project an amp designed to be a practice monitor or for an audio system?
vigilante398
Authorized Vendor
I haven't committed to making a DIY project for it, but the headphone amp I'm working on is designed to be a practice monitor.
benny_profane
Well-known member
Can I interest you into wading into the world of hi-fi?
vigilante398
Authorized Vendor
Probably not
though to be fair most of my customers are bassists so in order to get a good bass frequency response I am already using hi-fi output transformers.benny_profane
Well-known member
Well, let us know if you change your mind and take it a bit furtherProbably not
Alan W
Well-known member
These two cover my experiences also—both builds were for friends. The Bottlehead projects are really good sounding; I was almost shocked at how good their phono preamp is. (And he used to make a small guitar amp that I am truly sad I didn’t get when they were available.) My current headphone amp is very solid state, and is fully balanced (like the rest of my stereo) but the Bottlehead was quite lovely through my HiFi man phones. (My DAC has both balanced and unbalanced outputs.)
The Starlight I built is still going strong, and to my knowledge has not had noise issues (but I’ll be seeing that friend this next weekend, and will be sure to ask). For the money, it’s a slam dunk.
matmonster58
Active member
A tube headphone amp is on my list for this year. I plan to get a pair of HD600s soon and I've heard they paper well with tubes.
I'm thinking a bottlehead crack using one of vigilante398s power supply boards. It would make it completely transformerless, affordable, and pretty small. It'll probably take a bit of modding to make it work but I've gotten decent at modding circuits in the past year.
For a little more money, Pete Millets Jonokuchi looks really nice.
Rob robinet also has a cool post for a headphone amp based on his micro champ
I'm thinking a bottlehead crack using one of vigilante398s power supply boards. It would make it completely transformerless, affordable, and pretty small. It'll probably take a bit of modding to make it work but I've gotten decent at modding circuits in the past year.
For a little more money, Pete Millets Jonokuchi looks really nice.
Rob robinet also has a cool post for a headphone amp based on his micro champ
benny_profane
Well-known member
Edit: see post below
Aside: I much prefer Nathan’s scheme for mounting tubes than the outside-the-box method of many of the projects mentioned.
Last edited:
vigilante398
Authorized Vendor
The HV daughter boards I sell definitely do not have enough current to supply a 6080 or 6AS7 tube. You're going to need a power transformer.
pingpongcomputer
Active member
The Crack and other OTL designs are great for high impedance headphones like the hd600/650. If you don't need a kit, and want something that will work well with a broader range of headphones, there's some cool designs on wtfamps.com - I like the Papa Rusa
matmonster58
Active member
Good call, I didn't even check what tubes the crack uses. I guess I'll look into something 12au7 based
vigilante398
Authorized Vendor
My headphone amp uses a 12AU7 in the preamp and a 12BH7 in the power amp, and I'm powering it with a pair of SMPS, one for each channel. I had two of them at the NAMM show with me for people to test pedals so they were operating for 8-9 hours a day for 4 days and they held up well, no issues (except one of my NOS tubes going bad, sad day).
Genuinely curious. Do you notice a difference in sound fidelity (or any difference) between the tube headphone amp and a normal headphone "amp".
iamjackslackof
Well-known member
I feel like I did notice an improvement from the Project Starlight to the Crack. I remember listening to Led Zeppelin, which I've done for probably 2 decades at this point, and hearing all this extra detail. All the little squeaks and coughs and background sounds, plus the actual instruments just sounded better. I will say that I got nicer headphones around this time as well, so I assume it's a combination of factors.
I try to stay away from all the audiophile BS, which is why I say I *feel* like I did notice an improvement in sound quality. But this shit is so subjective
